NEWS & ANALYSIS

Hawks raid Supra Mahumapelo's offices

Mahikeng - The Hawks are raiding the offices of North West Premier Supra Mahumapelo looking for documents related to the multimillion-rand IT contract with Nepo Data Dynamics.

"We are currently at the offices of the premier. We are investigating a case of alleged corruption and fraud within the premier's office," Hawks regional spokesperson Captain Tlangelani Rikhotso told News24.

Rikhotso could not divulge any further information.

North West government spokesperson Brian Setswambung confirmed that the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI) arrived at the offices with a search warrant on Thursday morning.

"Nepo Data Dynamics has a three-year contract with the office of the premier, assisting him with rolling out the province's IT transformation programme," Setswambung said.

He said that Mahumapelo was at a meeting at the North West Legislature when the raid got under way. Setswambung said the Hawks did not enter the premier's office, but raided the office of the acting director-general for administration, Dianne Michael.

He added that the company was tasked with aligning all government IT systems for the province to ensure that they run seamlessly.

Last week, documents which claimed that the company had been paid R215m started circulating on social media.

Setswambung said the province had launched an investigation to establish how the documents were "illegally accessed".

"Our preliminary investigation shows that people not working for government are enticing junior employees to obtain documents illegally."

When News24 contacted Nepo Data Dynamics, the person on the phone did not want to be identified, and said the company had no comment about the raid.